Virtual Textbook
About this edition of the Virtual Textbook
This Virtual Textbook of Organic Chemistry is by the late William Reusch, Department of Chemistry, Michigan State University. The work and chemistry are his; this site preserves and continues to host the textbook so it remains available to students and instructors.
From the original MSU edition: "These pages are provided to the IOCD to assist in capacity building in chemical education. 05/05/2013." We continue that intent under DOC stewardship.
This page lists notable changes since the textbook moved to its new home.
Changes
- 2026 — Textbook migrated to organicchemistrydata.org
- The textbook was migrated from its original Michigan State University site to organicchemistrydata.org, hosted by the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry. The chemistry content is unchanged. Interactive diagrams, 3-D molecule viewers, and click-to-swap figures have been rebuilt using modern web technology (the original Java-applet and pop-up versions no longer run in current browsers).
- 2026 — "Show…" buttons now toggle on and off
- Many figures in the textbook have a "Show Mechanism," "Show Products," "Energy Profile," and similar button that swaps the figure to an alternate view. Previously a click would reveal the alternate view and you had to reload the page to get back to the original. These buttons are now proper toggles — a second click on the same button returns the figure to its starting state.
- 2026 — Replaced broken "chemist portrait" links with Wikipedia
- The textbook contained 58 links across 27 pages to Michigan State University's online "Famous Chemists" portrait gallery (Hammett, Eschenmoser, Stork, Cram, Fischer, Pasteur, Kekulé, Woodward, Pauling, Franklin, and others). MSU took that gallery offline, so the links all led to a 404. Each link has been repointed to the corresponding English Wikipedia article and now opens in a new tab.
- 2026 — Smarter "Check Answer" buttons on the practice problems
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Many of the practice pages let you draw a structure and press a
Check Answer button. Behind the scenes, the original textbook
compared your drawing to the expected structure by matching exact
letter-for-letter text — so if you drew the right molecule but the
drawing program described it slightly differently (for example, by
starting from a different atom, or by writing a double bond first
rather than second), the page told you "Wrong" even though your
answer was chemically correct.
The checker now uses a chemistry library (RDKit) to recognize when two structures represent the same molecule, no matter how they were drawn. If you draw the right molecule, you get marked correct. If you draw the right shape but forgot to indicate a stereo configuration, you now get a hint instead of a flat "Wrong". The questions are unchanged — the grader is just less picky about how you express the same molecule.
Spot a problem with the textbook? Please contact us. Bug reports and corrections from readers are always welcome.